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Every game counts equally. Every regular season game, that is. But each game is merely 1/162th of eventual total. That’s not much, rationally. But our rational selves and our emotional selves do not communicate well. I can’t put a scientific label on it, but the difference between seeing the Mariners travel to Texas with a 7-10 record and seeing the Mariners travel to Texas with a 6-11 record seems enormous, even though it isn’t.

The Tigers came to town with a great hitting offense and entered a park that, in a stupidly small sample so far, hadn’t spelled doom like it had last year. In fact , you can’t even spell doom with Safeco Field because you don’t have an ‘m’. Anyways, the Tigers had a bunch of dangerous and hot — whatever that means (nothing) — hitters and the Mariners pitchers shut them down.

I don’t have much more to say in general. I’m going to back to trying to work and keeping tabs on Boston.

Batter

PA

P/PA

Slash line

nBB

K (sw)

1B/2B/3B/HR

Sw%

Ct%

Qual+

K Morales^

52

3.7

.304/.396/.478

6

9 (6)

8 / 5 / 0 / 1

44

78

135

J Smoak^

49

4.0

.227/.306/.250

5

11 (9)

9 / 1 / 0 / 0

43

73

137

K Seager*

48

4.5

.200/.250/.333

3

8 (7)

3 / 6 / 0 / 0

39

80

92

D Ackley*

42

4.3

.175/.262/.200

2

8 (7)

6 / 1 / 0 / 0

41

84

100

M Morse

41

4.2

.211/.293/.395

3

12 (12)

5 / 1 / 0 / 2

52

68

176

B Ryan

38

3.8

.143/.184/.143

2

9 (6)

5 / 0 / 0 / 0

41

85

81

F Gutierrez

36

4.3

.229/.250/.543

1

10 (9)

3 / 2 / 0 / 3

46

79

86

R Ibanez*

36

4.1

.235/.278/.471

2

11 (10)

4 / 2 / 0 / 2

41

73

137

J Bay

33

4.1

.207/.303/.345

4

12 (10)

4 / 1 / 0 / 1

37

67

179

J Montero

32

3.5

.194/.219/.226

1

5 (5)

5 / 1 / 0 / 0

51

70

165

R Andino

21

4.3

.200/.238/.300

1

4 (2)

2 / 2 / 0 / 0

35

78

115

K Shoppach

20

4.4

.333/.400/.611

2

7 (6)

3 / 2 / 0 / 1

46

70

155

At least they’re not (yet?) the league’s worst offense. That’s an improvement!

Batter

PA

P/PA

Slash line

nBB

SO (sw)

1B/2B/3B/HR

Sw%

Ct%

Qual+

E Andrus

50

4.0

.200/.280/.200

5

7 (4)

9 / 0 / 0 / 0

41

80

130

I Kinsler

48

4.1

.349/.438/.628

5

4 (4)

11 / 0 / 0 / 4

41

89

116

N Cruz

47

4.1

.244/.277/.444

2

12 (10)

6 / 3 / 0 / 2

50

70

129

A Beltre

45

4.0

.256/.319/.465

2

3 (2)

6 / 3 / 0 / 2

46

87

151

D Murphy*

43

3.3

.143/.186/.286

1

7 (2)

3 / 1 / 1 / 1

49

89

83

M Moreland*

42

4.1

.211/.310/.395

4

7 (6)

5 / 1 / 0 / 2

42

77

143

A Pierzynski*

36

3.1

.286/.333/.514

1

8 (6)

7 / 0 / 1 / 2

57

81

170

L Berkman^

31

4.1

.308/.419/.577

5

5 (5)

3 / 4 / 0 / 1

40

69

90

L Martin*

23

3.9

.250/.348/.250

3

5 (3)

5 / 0 / 0 / 0

46

71

55

C Gentry

22

4.3

.167/.318/.222

4

5 (2)

2 / 1 / 0 / 0

40

82

149

The Rangers are perhaps a tad fortunate to have a 9-6 record given that they’ve played somewhat pedestrian baseball to date, but it’s early.

MARINERS

ΔMs

RANGERS

EDGE

INFIELD

-1.9 (21st)

-0.8

7.3 (4th)

Rangers

OUTFIELD

4.1 (10th)

0.5

-3.9 (25th)

Mariners

RBBIP

0.300 (10th)

+.004

0.288 (6th)

Rangers

OVERALL

2.2 (11th)

-0.3

3.5 (10th)

RANGERS

It’s a tad surprising to see the defensive ranks fall a skosh after how well the Tigers were prevented from getting hits or runs. Eight runs and 24 hits over 32 innings is quite suppressive, but it turns out to have been mostly the work of the pitchers this time as Tiger hitters struck out a remarkable 42 times against only 10 walks drawn.

19 APR 17:05 – YU DARVISH vs JOE SAUNDERS*

Does Yu Darvish have the best “stuff” in baseball?

Yeah, it certainly seems that way. All the more remarkable that he ever struggles against the Mariners.

Darvish is poor at controlling it, but nobody can hit anything he throws. In fact, since the start of last season the only starter with at least 50 innings pitched and a lower contact rate than Darvish is Francisco Liriano and he makes Darvish’s control seem like Cliff Lee’s.

Meanwhile, on the other side of this tilt is Joe Saunders.

Oh.

20 APR 17:05 – NICK TEPESCH vs BRANDON MAURER

Maurer and Tepesch have samples that are too small for me to care what their scouting graphs say at this point.

21 APR 12:05 – JUSTIN GRIMM vs AARON HARANG

Ditto Justin Grimm. For a team with judicious playoff expectations, the Rangers rotation sure is kinda meh. Here’s Aaron Harang though, not matching the one-so-far excellent performance that he is sure to repeat all season.

Like the hitting rundowns, I also do ones for the bullpen. They require longer sample windows since relievers are naturally so variant and don’t pitch all that often. As you can see with Luetge’s presence, this isn’t exclusive to who is on the team currently, but who has pitched in the past four weeks with a minimum of 20 batters faced.

Reliever

BF

Str%

nBB

Ct%

K(sw)

GB%

HR

Qual-

LI

C Capps

45

66.1

2

65.5

14 (12)

24.1

2

129.7

1.4

C Furbush*

32

54.6

8

58.5

11 (10)

53.8

1

81.9

1.1

K Loe

31

63.7

1

81.3

3 (3)

37.0

6

156.1

0.7

T Wilhelmsen

30

64.0

4

89.6

5 (4)

47.6

0

85.5

1.8

O Perez*

28

67.7

2

76.6

7 (6)

05.3

1

117.0

1.2

S Pryor

26

64.7

1

86.8

7 (3)

38.9

0

122.6

1.7

L Luetge*

20

65.1

0

71.9

3 (3)

41.2

0

101.5

0.5

Qual here is the same qual as above, except that for pitchers you want them to be below 100. And LI is leverage index, so you have get an idea of which pitchers are being deployed in what roles.

Oliver Perez this season has had 20 batted balls and only one grounder.